Alberta high school students to 3D print prosthetic hands for kids

A 3D-printed hand is pictured at Colin Pischke's home office in Calgary. Pischke has partnered with high school students across the province to 3D print and assemble custom-sized prosthetic hands for children in developing countries. Aryn Toombs / Calgary Herald

It’s not your typical high school math, science or social studies course.

When they head back to class this January, some Alberta teens will build prosthetic hands for children in developing countries through a partnership between a Calgary 3D printing company, a global non-profit and a credit-based high school course.

The fully functioning. custom-sized extremities will be created using desktop 3D printers and assembled by students in grades 10, 11 and 12. The students will learn about topics including technology, prosthetics, medicine, and social consciousness during the course of the project.

“I wish I was able to do something like this when I was in high school,” said Colin Pischke, the owner of Print Your Mind 3D and the man helping spearhead the one-of-a-kind initiative.

Funding for at least five prosthetic hands, which cost under $100 each, has been secured and Calgary-based Pischke is already using Skype and email to mentor a few students in Edmonton through the process of printing and assembling the robotic-looking devices.

He’s hoping to get more high schools and organizations in Calgary involved in the initiative and raise more money so at least 20 printed prosthetics can be made for amputees who need them.

Pischke said the project is a partnership between his company; a program called Innovate, which offers high school students credits for project-based learning around issues like sustainable development, renewable energy and 3D printing; and a global non-profit organization called E-Nable.

Founded in 2013 by an American research scientist, E-Nable consists of volunteers around the world who print and assemble customized fully functioning prostheses then give them to children for free. The organization has given 1,500 hands to people in 37 different countries.

Pischke said it takes about 15 hours to print the pieces for the prosthetic using files E-Nable has made public online and several hours of delicate work to assemble the components into workable fingers that can bend.

“3D printing the components is the easy part,” Pischke said. “The hard part is assembling the different pieces and hardware and getting the tensions right. There are a lot of components you need.”

The devices can be life-changing for kids who need them, said Pischke.

Standard prosthetic hands can cost several thousand dollars — a price that can be a massive barrier, especially for children who grow out of prostheses quickly.

“Although it’s a very simple prosthetic, they can now pick up a baseball bat for the first time, they can colour, they can draw, they can swim,” he said.

Pischke’s interest in the 3D printers was sparked while studying business at the University of Lethbridge and has since grown into “an all-out obsession.”

He’s passionate about using 3D printing for good and believes teaming up with students to create body parts is an opportunity for young people to use the devices to do more than make trinkets, something he said is typical for many schools with access to a 3D printer.

“With a desktop 3D printer, you can literally change someone’s life by printing one of these prosthetic hands for them,” he said. “It’s something much bigger than building a pencil holder for my desk.

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